


that sounds like a plan of an ordinary man

by toro (sapoeysap)



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Canon Compliant, Gen, Navel-Gazing, author's blatent misknowledge of space travel, existential ennui
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-02-22 21:15:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23667172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapoeysap/pseuds/toro
Summary: At least Marko has settled on firing him in-person, maybe the old man thought that cruelty should be delivered face to face this time.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 15





	that sounds like a plan of an ordinary man

**Author's Note:**

> for v and s.

Folding them up between his hands, the delicate paper along lines so faded from being pinned up for so long. Daniil's not sure when the posters on his bedroom wall had gone from Yuri Gagarin to Robert Kubica. But they had, at some point. Now he has to move up and over from Ufa to another country to chase this dream. He thinks about his parents and the way they are willing to give up everything for him to try and get somewhere with karting. Enough that they will pick up shop, ship the whole family to a foreign country and a foreign language.

It hasn't registered with him that he's good enough at this, at karting, that this is a shot for him. Something that he could do for a career perhaps, more than the things that he says to his teachers when they ask what his goals are in life. Maybe one day he'll even make it to Formula One. But the way it comes at the cost of the deeper dream. The model spaceship is fragile in his hands. It will go in a box into a storage unit. A part of him knows he will never see the ship again. 

Daniil already feels old beyond his thirteen years, Yuri will come and hang on his wall in the new apartment in Italy, next to his Russian/Italian dictionary, and Yuri will hang small next to the poster of Kubica. One day Daniil might be a Formula One driver, but for now, he puts the dream of being an astronaut on the backburner. Silly childish dreams for children. Daniil looks in the tiny mirror in the corner of his room, at his teeth too big for his mouth, hair bright blonde and unruly, cropped so tight to his head just to keep it in order. He is not a child anymore, now the time for him to grow up is calling, to be what everyone needs him to be. No time to dream about the stars when the tarmac calls your name. 

The poster slots easily in his ‘box to take’, next to his books and a tiny badge with the ROSCOSMOS logo. Russia disappears the moment the plane takes off, surrounded still by the accents so familiar, but now they will change their shape both in others mouths and his own as his tongue trips around lighter vowels. Daniil meets Robert Kubica at his first competition, first place trophy tucked into his side. And he doesn't stumble in his rudimentary English. Doesn't point and say, 'I have a poster of you on my wall’, the way he would have maybe not a year before. instead, he takes the hand offered, shakes it and introduces himself to his hero. It feels like a step to becoming a man. His father smiles from next to him, Daniil knows he has done well. Impressed. The helmet in his arms is the only weight he carries at this juncture. He’s too young to realise what a blessing this is. 

There's no indication that things will pan out the way they do. It's funny, the way Robert ends up this sort of background figure in his life. The sadness in the Poles eyes when Daniil admits he has taken the Red Bull Junior offer, instead of Kubica's karting group. But he still gets a handshake and an invite to BMW Sauber's garage. It's his first time in a proper F1 Garage and Kubica is the perfect host. Daniil doesn't dream in his sleep anymore, or if he does, he wouldn't remember it, sleep brought on easily by the stress of trying to keep up with the pressures that are living under Helmut Marko. Yet all the training, the sacrifices, stress and sleepless nights are worth it surely when Marko calls him into the office, tells him the Toro Rosso seat is his. His GP3 win enough to prove himself.

All the circumstances fall into place, he picks up French alongside the Italian, as a side hobby for long plane journey's, gets told his Russian sounds more Italian on a promo video for the brand-new Sochi GP. Pretends that doesn't hurt, he hasn't given up his mother country, she's just been left behind so he can be more, right? More than Russia could offer up for his dreams.

The Red Bull seat falls into place as he moves on from mastering French to mastering Spanish to impress a pretty girl with a pretty face and a famous Father. Daniil falls in love as his racing career falls apart, Kelly lies in bed with him and uses her few years on him to say that it's just racing. It doesn't feel like just racing, unaware in the sadness it's just an echo of his words to Sebastian, broadcast out live on TV. 'Torpedo' they call him now, and he's watching Game of Thrones and unable to clock it as an insult because at least they call him something, you can't be forgotten if you have a nickname right, there is logic there surely. Kelly lets him make love to her and neither of them talks about the tears that fall from his eyes. They shuffle down the years and he's numb by the time Red Bull finally drop him. 

Ferrari is this lifeline in red, and it feels oh so wrong the entire time he wears the prancing horse, the tailored suits and the Italian he understands so well. So, used to the double bull’s emblazoned on dark blue suits. But at least he's in the paddock, in people's memories. A side-note. Not much different from his role then at Red Bull. There’s Sebastian, the accompanying ‘It’s Racing’ jokes in the garage and the ever silent but ever watching Kimi. He gets the call from Nicholas Todt after the Charles deal goes through and out into the public, evident always which driver his manager cares about. Daniil loves the taste of nepotism, bitter on his tongue.

But at least he gets to race again, for Toro Rosso. Cancelling the win of the drive out with the relentless attention of being back emblazoned by the bull. Franz seems happy about it, Franz is fatherly enough that Daniil would be upset at himself for upsetting his team boss at any time. So, Daniil bites back his comments about how Red Bull had run out of juniors after he and Carlos went off for bigger and better, even if Renault isn't exactly working out for his friend. Now Red Bull are scrambling to get drivers, he’s met Alex Albon a few times enough for promo to know the boy is pleasant. But suddenly he’s wondering what happened to Brendon and it feels like a mistake the moment pens on paper. 

Anything is better than the sad hole of Red Bull and he's smart enough to know that. Which is why he accepts; he’s beaten so low that he can’t go any lower. At least he gets to race. Toro Rosso blue feels more comfortable on his skin than the Ferrari Red. Six weeks later Kelly tells him she's pregnant and now he's wondering what happened to the skinny awkward kid with the bad blond hair and teeth too big for his mouth. Not much really, he tells the mirror, as a fresh bout of acne mottles his skin, suddenly having to reacclimatise to the constant rub of Nomex and helmets. He feels so old, grown-up too fast and terrified of the future. Everything he wanted to be and more, but at what cost. 

Monaco is lovely, and now he's buying stuff for a baby and hiding from drivers in the streets, so they don't find out his secrets. He thinks Kelly resents him, that he's not at Penelope's birth, he has to watch through a webcam. That's when the rifts start, and he looks at his child in his arms and thinks I love you, but he knows that soon he will lose her and her mother because the 3rd place trophy that sits on his wall almost means as much as the gift in his arms. They implode truly at the end of the season, Brazil is Kelly's home, but he finds he's not welcome anymore. It hurts to see Pierre's podium because he teammate one-upped him, he wants to be mad. But at the same time, he has to watch Pierre go up and offer gratitude to a lost friend. Such a horrible world of horrible circumstances. And then he's pulled into Marko's office again in between Brazil and Abu Dhabi. He's lost his love and his child, so his seat might as well be next. It rolls off his back, like constant blows he can barely feel anymore his skin already so self-flagellated.

'Daniil' Marko says, and Daniil suppresses the shudders that run through his body as the memory of so few years ago replays strongly in his brain. At least Marko has settled on in-person, maybe the old man thought that cruelty should be delivered face to face this time. Horner alongside Marko at the desk, a confusing presence to Daniil’s resignation at the situation.

'We have been developing a program alongside NASA, and we think you would be the perfect candidate for it' Daniil can barely hear over the static in his brain, Marko explaining how the NASA trip was a test of Daniil’s interests, the Red Bull zero-gravity pit stop was a proof of things. His seat is still his seat, Franz’s say’s, Daniil so distracted he’s unsure of when Franz turned up. But he’s getting old and the junior program is finally back on track. It’s a hidden catch, go on your terms to this, or we boot you out and you know we can because we have done so before. 

Daniil finds himself saying yes before he’s thought it through. Just the temptation lying there, how one dream comes to an end, but he gets to fulfil his other dream, one buried so deep down under layers of trauma and race suits.

It happens very neatly. Red Bull have it all planned. His name sits as crisp black ink on the stark white paper. The neatest his handwriting has ever been. Jüri Vips seems nice, Daniil hasn’t interacted much with the young Estonian, previously in the knowledge that it was him he’d lose his seat too. Yet now the wheels are in motion for that action, he finds he wants to protect Jüri. Teach him how not to get swallowed up by Red Bull, he can be his own driver. He just can’t find the words, is an awkward shadow in the factory as he says goodbye to Faenza, his home. His last thought, as he leaves is that Vip’s looks better in the Toro Rosso blue then he ever did. It doesn’t hurt in the way it would have at twenty-two. 

Red Bull kindly pay for him to have a tiny flat in Salzburg, near their new Space Headquarters, a tacked-on centre to the already existing headquarters. They say it is small because he won’t be there much, because of the whole ‘training and in space thing’. Daniil unpacks a poster of Yuri Gagarin, one that he hasn’t seen in years, banned from his Monaco flat as it didn’t fit the style Kelly had set. His Kubica poster is there too. They hang small on his wall, but they hang. A reminder of everything, pasts and futures and pasts again. He remembers the model spaceship, wonders what happened to that box in the storage unit in Russia. Twelve years it must have been sat in a box. Will the cardboard have even survived? Let alone the plastic of the model spacecraft. 

He’s welcomed into the headquarters with warm arms. The mix of Italian still thrums through, the old Russian to Italian dictionaries are replaced by Italian to German. A language far removed from the romance languages that flow easily of his tongue, a bizarre in-between of English and Russian. He relishes the challenge between the long training days. His head is thrumming. They tell him he’s the perfect candidate. Astronauts required to know English and Russian as standard, every language he adds on top is a bonus to his qualifications. Which makes him laugh, his entire qualifications in life so far are ‘can drive, fast’. 

One catch to the entire thing was that the program is kept secret until they deem it worthy enough to go public. Marko had told him, they would launch just before the F1 team, before Toro Rosso’s launch. The learning a new language is a distraction from the things the Motorsport press are saying, how he’d been dropped again and so on despite a strong performance. It’s not true, the press stopped hurting him long ago, but this still stings a little. Because now he gets to achieve both his childhood dreams, yet everyone thinks he’s a failure at his first. The third-place trophy shines on the tiny shelf in the flat. Polished, shiny and beautiful in its odd ugliness. 

They bring the suit in, the first day of February, say that they will launch the day after Toro Rosso, and they will be called Alpha Tauri. A star, Aldebaran designated Alpha Tauri. Tauri like Taurus the constellation this star lives in, he’s never paid attention to his star sign before, other than Kelly’s laugh at him on his typical Taurian stubbornness. Something he’d never understood or agreed with. They give him the suit, white and decorated with the bull’s he is so familiar with in a darker blue than he has ever worn before.

There is a 26 stitched onto the lapel, next to a patch for NASA. Where the ROSCOSMOS badge had gone he wonders, it would look inappropriate now to be on his lapel here. He’s a betrayal to his childhood dream in a way still. Under the wrong corporation. Space is meant to be this politics less arena, but it is still so tied up in the arguments.

At least F1 has given him so much patience with these things. Neutrality is better than an argument. It’s the production values Red Bull have become so known for, flash and bangs. Here he is, this awkward gangly twenty-five-year-old, smiling with too many teeth for cameras flashing a thousand times. Explaining how happy he is with this movement to a space program, how the training is different yet similar to that of training for Formula One. Never once mentioning the childhood dream, he holds that card to his chest, tight. As if someone will find out that he thought of going to space more than going around a track for hundreds of laps. That someone would judge him for wanting this. 

An aside, that sit’s deep in his stomach, is the burning question so hot on journalists’ lips in the press conferences. He knows his messages lie unread; his likes probably seem desperate to outside eyes. There’s been no admission in the press, about the break-up, only what’s been inferred from Instagram stories that Daniil has been trying to ignore. Journalists hounding for an answer, and the press team tell them ‘don’t ask’, so there’s no question for Daniil to answer too. It’s the hardest thing, this admission that he keeps to himself. His child, and he’ll never know her dreams while he achieves his twice over. Cruel. 

He hadn’t lied when he had told the presser that training was different yet similar to F1. Now he’s sunk to the bottom of a deep pool, weighed down in heavy suits, foreign on his skin as the feeling of clothes in water. Dark blue surrounds him threatening to encroach on everything that Daniil find’s he has built up. This will be the killer they had said, the emptiness, the loneliness. Daniil can take on hurtling around a track in the fastest cars ever, but for the first time, he’s unsure if he can withstand the isolation of space. And the boredom that comes with it. There is no radio in his ear connecting him back to a pit lane wall of people who supposedly care. It is him. And him alone. 

He’s meant to be thinking about logistics, practising breathing, floating, emptying his brain just to focus on his training. Instead, thoughts are hurtling through unwelcome. 

At a signing, a long time ago, a girl had a patch on her jacket that had said ' _звезды зовут и мы идем за ними_ ' Daniil isn’t sure why he’s thinking about that now, a memory from what feels like a lifetime ago, it must have been before the first demotion. It accidentally becomes this lifeline too him. A phrase repeated over and over, this is not for them, for his ‘team’, this is for him, for the ones who dreamed of the stars. The engineers call his name in his helmet, and he rises to the surface. Christened with a new motivation. _the stars are calling and we are following_ fits better than the _fits body and mind_ that’s emblazoned on his Alpha Tauri suit.

Of all the strange turns and twists in Daniil’s twenty-five years, it’s nice that his slice of normality is sat in a little bakery not far from the Alpha Tauri headquarters. With Robert Kubica opposite. Who seems more settled into himself, wearing an Alfa Romeo jacket like a badge of honour. It’s a healthy deal the Pole has struck up with his new team. One that he seems very content with. He shrugs when Daniil asks if he misses all of William’s supposed assassination attempts. ‘At least Kimi would kill me face to face’. It’s reassuring to Daniil, that things are getting better for his friend. They end up going karting. Spinning circles around a track. Karting for Karting’s sake. Daniil finds he cares more about Rob’s upcoming DTM season than the fact the Pole had done well in testing. The thought of anything to do with F1 leaves a tilting in his stomach, the same feeling he gets when he’s down at the bottom of the training pool.

‘We will do this more often’ Rob laughs and so they do. Kubica makes a good sparring partner Daniil finds, it’s as much of a mind game as an actual spar. The Pole’s brain focused to compensate for the lack of one arm. Boxing’s always been fun for Dany but it’s nice to have a training partner as invested as he is. He’s sad when Rob has to leave properly. The season finally kicking off into full swing. The punching bag has no funny remarks, just a wall of black and red. His trainers are nice, friendly even. But it had felt right to be facing up against Kubica before he flings himself into the unknown reaches of space. Literally. Because that’s a thing he is doing. His mind kicks himself and he’s back into the gauntlet again. 

Technically, it takes years of training to go up into space. The whole point of this experiment though is that he’s already in this perfect well-trained condition, like a tick list of an ideal lab rat. Multiple languages, check, used to loud noises, check, and so on. 

He wonders if Marko got what he wanted, rid of another broken Red Bull junior, not cut out to meet the standards that Marko holds everyone up to. 

Out in space, he will be just for him. It’s an attached name the Alpha Tauri. One that Daniil find’s he’s grateful for. But not reliant on anymore. 

Daniil knows, from books, and from thing’s he’s been told. That the rituals before they send you into space are bizarre. So strange, that he’s not quite sure if he should believe them. Someone laughs, tells him politely at least they are launching from America and not Russia. Daniil sits in his room and remembers the stories he’d read as a child, of Astronauts and their strange customs. Sort of sad he won’t have to follow through. He still has songs in mind though, for the launch. That’s a custom they can’t take away from him surely. 

They’ve deemed him ready though, practice and prepared for the challenge. 

Fold’s his posters up. Goes back to Monaco and a small flat he brought over a property website. Hangs them up there, adds the details of décor, the tiny detritus of his twenty-five years to this new home just to gather dust. Like the particles that make him up, made of cosmic dust, remnants of stars and exploded galaxies. That formed him. Three years ago, he would have said it was a waste of the stars, now. Now he gets to go be up in the stars. He flies to America at peace with it all. 

Relatively, somewhere in the back of his mind is the thought that it could all go wrong. That his family would have to come in, take down his life and sift through his belongings. Yet that was a risk he took every time he slipped into the car. Nothing has changed. 

He makes it to Texas, is shown to a room, and on the bed is a small box. In the box, is a rabbit toy, ear chewed and felt already run down. Alongside is a note in familiar handwriting, perfumed with a scent that he knows so well. Daniil hasn’t slept with a toy in a long time, but he allows himself this. 

For all the hype, the overinflated words of the journalists, the scientists, everyone involved.

The launch is very simple. 

Well, for Daniil at least. It’s probably hell for everyone around him, nervous eyes on complicated buttons. 

They let him listen to music at least, he has three songs. Kings of Leon, an anthem for himself. A Russian song that reminds him of home and the nostalgia of the turn of the millennium, and an Italian song. Something of the homes he has adopted along the way. 

The atmosphere breaks around him, changes, undulates and shifts. Stabilizes slowly, and the toy rabbit starts to float as gravity loosens its hold. Daniil wants to grab it, hold it down to his chest, terrified it will float away from him forever. 

Finally, it is just him, alone in space. 

Earth stretches down below him, earth that he’s travelled so well. 

It is all just concrete, fields and oceans now. 

Daniil has left it, taken this version of the world he lives in, kept it tight to his chest. When he sinks back down, hurtling through the atmosphere. The world will have changed. Rotated without him steady on the ground. The version he has kept in his mind, frozen for all this time, will not be the same. None of this upsets him. 

It will take a while before he docks with the ISS properly. 

Mission control comes over the radio, he’s allowed to unstrap from the seat. 

All the training, the practising, the flights into Zero-Gravity don’t quite match up to this exact feeling. 

He stretches out, grabs the toy rabbit from the air. Holds it tight.

A peace to it, just, hanging there. A moment in time no one else will get to experience, not shared with anybody but himself. 

Here, a dot on the horizon, a moment in time burning through space. No one to please, sure, he’s wearing team colours, but theirs no one here to shout at him, bring him down in snide comments. In a second, he will have to report back to Mission Control. Let what feels like a million voices back into his auditory senses. Go through all the motions that have been trained into him in drills over and over. 

For now, though, just for a tiny insignificant period. Daniil figures he can allow himself just this space to himself. Allowed to just be. Finally, for what feels like the first time in a long time, 

Daniil just exists. 

**Author's Note:**

> [see you space comrade](https://alphatoro.tumblr.com/)


End file.
